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26 Jun 09

LIBERATING LEARNING | John E. Chubb and Terry M. Moe

An Excerpt from Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of Education

www.liberatinglearning.org/?page_id=11 - Preview

education reform technology school improvement politics

Curricula can be customized to meet the learning styles and life situations of individual students, giving them productive alternatives to the boring standardization of traditional schooling.

Education can be freed from geographic constraint: students and teachers do not have to meet in a building within a school within a district, but can be anywhere, doing their work at any time.

Students can have more interaction with their teachers and with one another, including teachers and students who may be thousands of miles away or from different nations or cultures.

Parents can readily be included in the communications loop and involved more actively in the education of their kids.

Teachers can be freed from their tradition-bound classroom roles, employed in more differentiated and productive ways, and offered new career paths.

Sophisticated data systems can put the spotlight on performance, make progress (or the lack of it) transparent to all concerned, and sharpen accountability.

Schools can be operated at lower cost, relying more on technolog
y (which is relatively cheap) and less on labor (which is relatively expensive).
3 more annotations...
- The force of technology is up against a counterforce: resistance by groups that do not want the traditional education system to change. Precisely because technology promises to transform the core components of schooling, it is inevitably disruptive to the jobs, routines, and resources of the people whose livelihoods derive from the existing system—and these people are represented by organizations that are extraordinarily powerful in politics. They are trying to use that power to prevent technology from transforming American education. And they will continue to do so in the future.
- America has been dissatisfied with the performance of its public schools for decades now, and has persistently tried to reform and improve them, but with disappointing results. A prime reason for all the disappointment is that reforms that really promise to change things are also threatening to groups with material stakes in the existing system—and throughout the reformist era, they have used their political power to prevent major change and preserve the status quo. This being so, the American education system faces much more than a performance problem. It also faces a political problem that, in the grander scheme of things, is more fundamental than the performance problem itself—because it prevents the performance problem from being seriously addressed and resolved.
- For there are vested interests—groups with a material stake in the status quo—in every area of public policy, and they tend to be organized, powerful, and quite successful at using the political process to prevent reform within their own policy domains.

16 Jul 07

Technophilia: U.S. government web sites you didn't know you could use - Lifehacker

lifehacker.com/...-know-you-could-use-277405.php - Preview

Government History Lifehacker Reference free fun lifehacks links politics research science tips tools web

21 Apr 07

Senate OKs replacing TAKS in high school | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

www.chron.com/...4732966.html - Preview

TAKS TEA Texas education education-news learning policy politics teaching testing

02 Jan 07

One Laptop per Child

Official Website of the One Laptop Per Child project. - sscajun on 2007-01-04

15 Nov 06

Educator Roundtable

www.educatorroundtable.org/index.html - Preview

education nclb politics school-improvement

The purpose of The Educator Roundtable is to improve education-related legislation by amplifying the informed perspectives of professional educators; local, state, and national board associations; university policy and education departments; local PTA's, - sscajun on 2007-01-04

05 Jun 06